Archive for January, 2011|Monthly archive page

Al Qaeda And the U.S., Still Battling
By MICHIKO KAKUTANI
THE LONGEST WAR

The Enduring Conflict Between America and Al-Qaeda

By Peter L. Bergen

Illustrated. 473 pages. Free Press. $28.
By now there are already dozens of books — a few of them, groundbreaking works of reportage — about Al Qaeda and 9/11, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the Bush and Obama administrations’ management of national security.

What makes “The Longest War,” a new book by Peter L. Bergen, CNN’s national security analyst, particularly useful is that it provides a succinct and compelling overview of these huge, complex subjects, drawing upon other journalists’ pioneering work as well as the author’s own expertise in terrorism and interviews with a broad spectrum of figures including leading counterterrorism officials, members of the Taliban, failed suicide bombers, family and friends of Osama bin Laden and top American military officers.

For readers interested in a highly informed, wide-angled, single-volume briefing on the war on terror so far, “The Longest War” is clearly that essential book.

NEW YORK – The contaminated bank tower stood shrouded in black netting for years over ground zero, filled with toxic dust and the remains of 9/11 victims. It stayed where it was, not coming down even as the towers at the World Trade Center site slowly began to rise.

Nearly a decade after the trade center’s south tower fell into it, the building with a sad history of legal and regulatory fights, multiple accidents and a blaze that killed two firefighters will finally be gone. The demise of the 41-story former Deutsche Bank building, just south of ground zero, is at least as welcome to its neighbors as the construction of new trade center towers.